OpenAI releases Economic Blueprint to strengthen U.S. leadership in AI

Today’s Highlights:

📰 News: OpenAI releases Economic Blueprint to strengthen U.S. leadership in AI + Biden proposes sweeping new rules for exporting U.S.-made AI chips

💰 Funding: Blaize to become the first AI chip startup to go public this year

⚡️ Top News Stories:

1. OpenAI has released an Economic Blueprint outlining policy proposals to strengthen U.S. leadership in AI by attracting funding for infrastructure, streamlining regulations, and developing export controls to balance innovation and national security.

• The blueprint emphasizes increasing federal investment in chips, data centers, and energy, including nuclear power, to meet the demands of AI development and maintain the U.S.'s competitive edge.

• OpenAI advocates for voluntary, government-led frameworks for AI safety and deployment, encouraging collaboration with national security agencies and allies while avoiding overly restrictive mandates.

• OpenAI argues for the use of publicly available, including copyrighted, content for AI training, asserting that restrictions would shift advantages to nations without similar intellectual property protections.

• OpenAI highlights the strategic importance of AI in national security, urging the U.S. to act decisively to prevent authoritarian regimes from dominating AI development and deployment.

2. The Biden administration proposed sweeping new rules for exporting U.S.-made AI chips, introducing caps and restrictions to limit AI diffusion, especially to countries seen as adversaries or intermediary risks.

• Nations are divided into 3 categories: (1) Strong allies like Japan and South Korea, unaffected by the rules; (2) Adversaries such as China and Russia, facing stricter bans; (3) Neutral countries like Mexico, Portugal, and Israel, capped at 50,000 GPUs per country.

• The rule addresses risks of AI misuse by adversaries, including development of weapons of mass destruction, offensive cyber operations, and human rights abuses like mass surveillance.

• Restrictions on neutral nations are designed to prevent adversaries from accessing chips through intermediaries but could slow AI adoption in these countries, creating economic and innovation hurdles.

• The administration emphasizes working with AI companies and foreign governments to establish security and trust standards in global AI ecosystems.

• The rules aim to ensure that U.S. technology underpins global AI use, preventing offshoring of critical technology and maintaining economic and security advantages.

• Companies like Nvidia and Oracle, along with the Semiconductor Industry Association, criticized the rules for potentially harming U.S. competitiveness, stifling global innovation, and creating unintended consequences under a "misguided" regulatory framework.

• NVIDIA specifically warned that it could hinder global innovation and economic growth by imposing excessive regulatory control over mainstream computing technologies.

3. The U.K. government unveiled its "Plan for Change," a sweeping initiative to bolster AI through public sector improvements, geographic "AI Growth Zones," a new National Data Library, and increased computing capacity, aiming to modernize the economy and become a global leader in AI.

• CoreWeave, the $19Bn AI compute provider, has launched its first two data centers outside the U.S., located in Crawley and London Docklands, as part of a £1Bn investment in the U.K. , supporting the initiative

4. Cohere has introduced North, an integrated AI platform designed to enhance workplace productivity by combining LLMs, advanced search capabilities, and automation within a secure environment, enabling organizations to quickly adopt AI-driven solutions tailored to their specific industry needs.

5. UC Berkeley’s NovaSky team introduced Sky-T1-32B-Preview, a competitive, open-source reasoning AI model trained for under $450, outperforming proprietary models like o1-preview on key math and coding benchmarks and marking a significant step in affordable AI research.

6. The World Economic Forum’s 2025 Future of Jobs Report reveals that 86% of companies expect AI to transform operations by 2030, creating 11M new jobs, displacing 9M, and reshaping workforce strategies worldwide.

7. AWS and General Catalyst announced a partnership to transform healthcare through generative AI, focusing on predictive and personalized care, interoperability, operational efficiency, diagnostics, and patient engagement to enhance outcomes and accessibility.

8. Microsoft has established the CoreAI – Platform and Tools division to unify its developer and AI platform teams, integrating Azure, GitHub, and VS Code to build an AI-first platform that revolutionizes application development and drives innovation across industries.

9. OpenAI has reopened its robotics division to develop custom, versatile robots equipped with advanced AI, focusing on dynamic real-world applications, with job listings emphasizing sensor suite development, mechanical design, and prototype testing.

💰 Top Funding News:

1. Blaize, set to become the first AI chip startup to go public this year through a Nasdaq SPAC merger valuing it at $1.2Bn, specializes in low-power AI chips for edge computing applications like security cameras, drones, and industrial robots, distinguishing itself from Nvidia's focus on data center AI chips.

2. Collate, an AI startup automating documentation for life sciences businesses, raised a $30M seed round led by Redpoint, with participation from First Round, Conviction Partners, and Y Combinator.

3. Raspberry AI, an AI startup revolutionizing fashion design with generative tools for rapid visualization and iteration, raised a $24M Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Greycroft, Correlation Ventures, and MVP Ventures.

4. Qventus, an AI healthcare company streamlining clinical and administrative operations, raised a $105M Series D led by KKR, with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, Northwestern Medicine, HonorHealth, and Allina Health.

5. Cera, an AI-powered in-home healthcare provider predicting and preventing patient risks through advanced modeling, raised $150M in a debt-and-equity round led by BDT & MSD Partners and Schroders Capital.

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